


Cracking Façade

by Tori_Scribbles



Series: In A Foxes Hole [5]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Families of Choice, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Let Renee and Neil Be Friends, M/M, NaNoWriMo 2018, Neil Is Bad At Dealing With His Issues, Neil Josten Has Issues, Neil Needs Therapy, Panic Attacks, Past Torture, People Are Vicious, People are Dicks, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soft Neil Josten, Survivors Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, protective foxes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 23:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tori_Scribbles/pseuds/Tori_Scribbles
Summary: Neil was stretching too thin. He was focussing on Kevin’s French instructions, the Bearcats defence, where the ball was and keeping half an eye on the cousins and their German bickering whenever he could. So when one of the Bearcats defenders slamming him back into the court wall, her hand gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place, his heart lurched.





	Cracking Façade

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to post this before 'Choices', whoops.  
> As always, can be read alone or as a part of the series.  
> This is their first game in Neil's second year at PSU.

Nobody expected the game to be fair and easy. It was the first time the Foxes had played the Bearcats since the brutal game last spring and it was the first time Neil got to face them and it appeared that they were still bitter about their loss last season.

With an extra seven viable players, the Foxes evened the playing field. So when the Bearcats threw the first punch, Kevin didn’t hesitate to shove back. It was one of the most brutal games that Neil had played. Sheena flew through the air, her back slamming into the wall with a sickening thud, getting the Bearcats their first red card just eight minutes in.

If the Foxes thought these opponents were crossing a line last season, they were well past even seeing the line this time around. Slurs, insults and names were launched across the court. Ten minutes before half time the player on Nicky’s back shouted something and although Neil was too far away to hear what he said, he could see the fall out. Whatever it was, was bad enough to make Nicky falter, Aaron launched himself across at the player, causing a big enough disturbance that Andrew strode outside of his box. He didn’t intervene, just watched, racquet clasped in his hands as he let Matt and Allison try and break it up.

Neil jogged up the court, and after a split second of consideration, he went to Nicky who hadn’t moved and startled when Neil shouted his name.

Nicky met his eyes and shook his head. His jaw tightened and there was an anger in Nicky’s eyes that reminded Neil of Andrew for a minute.

“Don’t.” Is all he said and turned away to watch as Aaron got a yellow card.

As requested, Neil didn’t ask. But Dan did. As the half time buzzer went Aaron stormed off the court, the rest of the team half a step behind him. Neil stepped into the locker room just in time to see Aaron slam his, thankfully gloved, hand into a locker with enough force to leave a dent.

“What the fuck?” Dan cried, pulling her helmet off with a glare at the cousins. “What just happened?”

Aaron just shook his head, pulling his own helmet off with a look of violence that Neil had only seen on his face once before. “They can go fuck themselves is what,” he spat.

“What did they say?” Matt asked quietly. “We’ve dealt with this shit before. What did they say that was different?”

Nicky looked to Andrew but didn’t say anything and when everyone followed his gaze, Andrew paused.

“He asked if Nicky got a turn in _turning_ me,” Andrew said sounding bored. “And if so, how comes Aaron hadn’t put a racquet through his head... unless I enjoyed it more than I did with the others.”

It took Neil a moment to process the meaning behind the words and when he did he felt a burning hot fury rise up through his veins.

Dan, Matt and Allison all shouted with equal amounts of horror and anger. Wymack silenced them with a wave of his hand but even he had a dark look in his eyes.

The new recruits exchanged looks of uncertainty but thankfully they knew better than to open their mouths.

Neil’s eyes were fixed on Andrew who was watching the room with an almost bored expression on his face but he was leaning back against the wall with his hands wedged between himself and the wall, and Neil wondered if he was stopping himself from leaving, or if behind him there was a knife drawn.

Wymack let his eyes drift across the cousins. “If I send you back out there are you going to play or are you going to start a fight?” he asked.

Nicky and Aaron exchanged a look and glanced back at Andrew.

Andrew's lips curled up into what was once a manic, medicated grin, but now it was darker, less of a grin at all and more of a snarl. "I'm great," he lied and the rest of the team knew better than to question it.

Nicky glanced at Aaron again and nodded. “So are we.”

Wymack nodded. “Alright, but the first time any of you take a swing I’m pulling you,” he said and they nodded. The two-minute buzzer sounded and he sighed. “Good. Jack you're off, Kevin you’re up. Now go and win this.”

There was a chorus of “Yes Coach.” Before everyone headed back towards the court.

As they moved inside to take their marks, Neil held out his racquet and Andrew tapped his against it as he went past in a silent confirmation that he had this. With Jack and Sheena off the court, their line up for the second half was stronger than their first. With Allison and Kevin in their places, with the added dose of anger, the Foxes had the edge.

When the buzzer went, Allison launched the ball back, a play that they hadn’t used in a while, but it was effective. Andrew batted it hard enough that it ricocheted off the opposite wall and straight into Kevin’s net. Neil dove forwards at Kevin’s French warning and barely snatched it out of the air, ducking around the defence and firing it straight into the goal that flared red behind the keeper who swore at his defence angrily.

Besides shooting Neil a dirty look, his backliner mark didn’t react, just turned away and the game went on.

The Bearcats seemed to realise that over half time the Foxes anger and determination had grown and the tension on the court rose even higher.

Neil was stretching too thin. He was focussing on Kevin’s French instructions, the Bearcats defence, where the ball was and keeping half an eye on the cousins and their German bickering whenever he could. So when one of the Bearcats defenders slamming him back into the court wall, her hand gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place, his heart lurched.

“Is that all you’ve got, Nathaniel?”

Neil felt the air rush from his lungs and her eyes, in the same shade of brown, glinted in the way that Lola’s had and suddenly he was no longer on the Foxhole Court.

He was being dragged through a riot, shoved in the trunk of a car and forced into a basement all at once.

His body not his own.

The hands on him not the backliners.

He was trying to run, trying to fight and giving up all at once.

He felt like he was going to be sick.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t see.

The walls were closing in.

Neil’s eyes snapped open at the shout of his name and he gasped for breath that wasn’t there.

Andrew was in front of him, helmet off, his fingers through the grate on Neil’s visor, pulling it forward so it pressed almost uncomfortably into the back of his head.

“Look at me,” Andrew said, jerking Neil’s helmet slightly. _“Look at me.”_

Neil forced his eyes up to meet Andrew’s and Andrew’s look was firm and unwavering.

“You can’t do this here, you understand me?” his voice raised over the shouts of the crowd. The lights seemed to brighten and flare around them and Neil tried to recoil away from them but Andrew wouldn’t let him, he jerked his helmet firmly. “No. Calm down right now and breathe.”

Andrew’s stare was intense didn’t waver until Neil started to take slower breaths in and as he did, the world started to come back into focus around him. Neil was sitting against the wall where the defender had pinned him, his racquet laying a good distance away like someone had moved it out of his reach. Andrew was crouched in front of him, his helmet and gloves at his side and around them in a protective arc was the rest of the team. Allison was yelling at someone, probably the Bearcats but she remained where she was, blocking Neil from their view. As Neil turned his head slightly, he could see Renee and Dan on the other side of the plexiglass wall watching the scene play out with looks of worry and anger on their faces.

As he realised what he’d done he felt the anxiety start to seep back into his chest but Andrew didn’t give him time to dwell on it, he pressed harder on his helmet, the pressure forcing him to stay in the moment.

“Can you move?” he asked and Neil took a second before nodding, ignoring the way his stomach lurched and the court spun.

“Just gimme my racquet and I’m fine,” he said, ignoring the way Kevin shot him a dark look over his shoulder.

Andrew jerked his helmet, sharper this time more of a rebuke. “I didn’t ask if you could play, I asked if you could move,” he said, “Coach is pulling you for Dan.”

A protest was halfway out of his mouth before Kevin turned fully around, joining Andrew on the floor.

“Take the rest of the game, we’ve won this already and they know it,” he said, “you’ve done enough and you’re going to do us no good trying to play like this.” Neil dragged his eyes up to meet Kevin’s, an argument on his lips. Kevin shook his head. “Your physical and mental health is more important than this game,” he said, leaving no room for an argument. “Know when to call it a day.”

Neil swallowed thickly, and any other day Neil would've called out the irony of Kevin telling him to take a break, but now he just nodded. “Alright,” he said, shifting slightly so he was in a position he could stand from.

Matt waved at Dan over Neil’s head and a second later it was announced that they were subbing out.

Andrew dropped his hand from Neil’s visor and stepped back, pulling his own helmet back on while Neil pushed himself up off the floor with unsteady feet. Moving quickly seemed to be a bad idea and he stumbled slightly as he reached for his racquet but Kevin caught his arm before he could go anywhere. Nicky bent, picking up the racquet that Neil couldn’t reach and pressed it into his hands.

Neil opened his mouth to say something, maybe to thank them but the words got stuck in his throat but Nicky seemed to understand.

He nodded slightly, with a soft, “later.” And stepped aside so they could get through. Neil let Andrew and Kevin escort him to the court door and as it was opened with a buzz, Dan stepped through a calm look of anger on her face. She tapped her racquet against Neil’s in a silent show of solidarity before jogging out onto the court as Neil stepped off, where Renee was waiting, the rest of the subs hovering behind her. Neil didn’t spare them a glance, just let Renee take his racquet and focussed on pulling off his gloves and helmet.

“I’m fine, really,” he tried to say when Abby and Wymack looked at him expectantly.

“No you’re not,” Abby said, her voice soft but with an underlying hardness, “go wash up, take a minute and come back out if you’re ready.”

Again, Neil wanted to protest but a firm, wordless look from Wymack stopped him. Instead, he nodded, heading away from the court and straight into the locker room to the showers.

Neil stripped efficiently, putting his kit away with shaking hands before he stumbled under the spray.

But it was too hot.

The water scalding into his skin.

The same way that the—

Neil slammed his hand against the temperature control and a rush of cold water hit him.

He scrubbed at his body, trying to force away the feeling of anyone else’s hands on him until he was so cold that he could barely stand. Once out of the shower Neil dressed with violent shivers, it took him several attempts to do up fastenings on his clothes. Struggling to get his arm in his varsity jacket because the air conditioning did nothing but make the shaking work. He launched it across the room with a frustrated shout, it crumpled in a heap several feet away and Neil stumbled backwards against the lockers, sliding down to the floor. He buried his head in his hands, gripping tightly at his hair.

A soft knock on the door startled him back to reality. He didn’t know how long he’d been sat there but he was still shivering and his jacket was still across the room.

“Neil, it’s Renee, can I come in?”

Neil forced himself to look at the door but was too cold and too tired to form words.

“Neil, I’m coming in unless you tell me otherwise.”

She waited for a minute but when Neil couldn't force himself to speak, she pushed open the door.

Renee stood in the doorway, still in her kit asides from the gloves and helmet, with an expression on her face that Neil couldn’t quite read as she surveyed the room.

She stepped towards him, perching on the edge of the bench to his right.

“Can I touch you?” she asked.

The simplicity of the question left only room for one of two answers and it was so familiar that even in his out of it state, Neil could manage a response. “Yes.”

Renee reached towards him with slow hands to rest in his hair and when he jerked at the contact, she stilled. Giving him time to adjust to the feeling of her hand, she slowly started to comb her fingers through his hair until he started to feel the tension draining from his body and he felt more solid.

“I’m sorry.”

Renee’s fingers faltered for a brief second before continuing. “For what?”

Neil waved a hand around the locker room as if that explained it all and when Renee didn’t accept that as an answer he let out a heavy breath. “For everything."

“Why?”

Her quiet question made his thoughts pause. Why wouldn’t he be sorry? Why for everything? Why did he keep doing this?

“Because I can normally hold it together better. I don’t know why I’m letting it get to me like this,” he managed.

“Because you know now that you don’t need to hold it together all of the time,” she said and the words twisted something inside of Neil’s chest in a way that he couldn’t explain. “You’re learning that it’s okay to stumble and break sometimes and more importantly, you’re learning to rely on the team to have your back and to help you put yourself back together again at the end.”

But Neil didn’t understand the kindness in her voice. Did he really deserve it after everything he put the team through again and again? Was it really fair to expect them to be there for him every time he fucked something else up?

“None of this would have happened if I just turned down Coach when he came to Milport,” he said instead and Renee hummed in agreement.

“You’re right,” she said. “But Kevin would probably be dead. He would have gone back to the Ravens and they would have killed him and Riko would have gotten away with it and Jean was a lose end; so they would have killed him too. If you’d have never come here then Andrew and Aaron would probably never speak to each other again and Nicky would have gone home and never known the truth about what his family had a part in doing. If you stayed in Milport we never would have won championships.”

Neil opened his mouth to object.

“Your father still would have been released from prison, you’d have either never stopped running or you’d be dead. You would have had no life. No future,” she said bluntly. “Coming here may have disrupted our lives, it may have gotten some of us hurt, maybe it got Seth killed but maybe Riko would have done that anyway. We’re never going to know for sure. But we do that what we have right now isn’t half bad and for a lot of us it’s so much better than what we had. You could argue that we would have found that without you, but we wouldn’t have. Not in the same way. Because we’d have still been missing a piece of the puzzle.”

And it took Neil a minute to realise that she was referring to him, as if he was the missing piece they’d been waiting for.

He didn’t have the words to express what meant to Renee and he didn’t need them. He leant back further into her touch and he couldn’t see the expression on her face but after a second, her nails scratched against his scalp in a movement that was so unfamiliar to Neil but was surprisingly comforting.

He didn’t know how long they sat there together before the final buzzer blared through the locker room, cutting through the silence loudly and Neil flinched violently at the sound.

Renee’s fingers softened as he relaxed again. “Why don’t we go and wait in the offices,” she suggested lightly, “it’ll be quieter for when the others get back.”

Neil was half aware that he nodded, too sluggish and tired to dispute the fact.

Renee withdrew her hand and rose to her feet. She collected Neil’s jacket off the floor and waited as he pulled himself upright. He pushed his locker closed, swiping his bag up and followed her out of the room. They veered sharply past the foyer as the press started to swarm and something in the back of his mind told Neil that he was supposed to do press tonight, and it was just another thing that he’d let them down for.

Renee punched in the code for Abby’s office and let him inside. He pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the medical couch, dropping his bag at his feet and through a haze he watched her set his jacket next to him.

“I’m going to go shower,” she said softly, “unless you need me here, then I will wait until Andrew is done.”

Neil looked up at her and forced himself to shake his head. “I’m fine,” he said automatically and Renee’s expression hardened, like she couldn’t believe he just said that to her.

He sighed. “I’ll be okay until everyone else is done,” he amended and her expression softened back into a smile. With a slight incline of her head, she left.

Neil let his head drop down into his hands and forced himself to focus on breathing, trying to tune out of the shouts and stampedes of footsteps outside the office.

Minutes upon minutes ticked by before the lock on the door beeped and it opened. Neil looked up instinctively as Andrew slid through into the room. He tried to smile at him but judging by the dark look on Andrew’s face it was more of a grimace.

Andrew was in front of him in two short strides, his hand hovering over the back of his neck.

“Yes,” Neil whispered at the silent question, needing some sort of connection to the world around him. Andrew’s hand was on the back of his neck a heartbeat later and Neil dropped his head down to rest against Andrew’s chest. Andrew squeezed the back of his neck comfortingly, bringing the other hand up to grip his hair.

Neither of them spoke. Neither of them needed too. Just them being there, in that moment, together, was enough.

Time became meaningless, but eventually, a soft knock on the door disturbed them. Andrew called out for them to come in, but when Neil tried to raise his head to see who it was, Andrew kept him there for another minute before letting the hand in his hair slide away.

Neil looked up slowly, blinking groggily as the sudden light made black dots appear in his eyes.

Abby was standing about a foot behind Andrew, an open expression on her face.

“How do you feel?” she asked and when Neil opened his mouth to say he was fine, the hand on the back of his neck slid up to tug on the ends of his hair sharply.

Neil hesitated. “Tired,” he said after a minute and Abby nodded.

“Understandable,” she said, “make sure you eat and drink something and get some rest.”

“Thanks,” Neil mumbled.

“The stadium is pretty much cleared out, Nicky, Aaron and Kevin are waiting in the foyer,” she said, “but you take as much time as you need.”

“What?” Andrew prompted when she made no move to leave.

“Betsy was at the game tonight,” she said and Neil tensed as he realised where this was going. Andrew pressed his thumb into the base of Neil’s skull but otherwise didn’t react. “She’s talking to David, but she’d like to speak to you before you leave.”

Neil clenched his jaw and would have looked away had Andrew not had hold of his neck, silently reminding him to be nice to Betsy.

“Sure,” he sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. “Whatever.”

Andrew’s eyebrow twitched almost in what could’ve been considered amusement at Neil’s displeasure but Abby just smiled, ducking out of the room to fetch her. Andrew looked down at him blankly, not saying anything, just studying his expression, searching for something that Neil didn’t know.

He looked away as Betsy came in with the usual, “Hey, Bee.”

Betsy smiled too kindly. “Hello, Andrew, Neil.” She looked between them. “Can I come in?”

“Do I have a choice?” Neil asked tiredly, barely even registering as Andrew yanked at the bottom of his hair again.

“Yes,” Betsy said, “this isn’t a mandated check-in, I’m not going to pull you from the line-up. I just wanted to see how you were doing. It looked pretty rough out there.”

Neil shrugged. “I’ve had worse,” he said and Andrew looked as though he was resisting the urge to yank his hair again.

“You know, things don’t have to be at their very worst for you to be affected by them,” she said. Neil thought his mother would disagree.

“It’s not the point,” he said before he could stop himself and Betsy raised a curious eyebrow at him.

“What isn’t?”

But Neil wasn’t going to play that game so he just shook his head.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m sure Abby told you to get some rest and have something sugary before you sleep. And I want you to remember that my door is always open for you.”

“Thanks,” Neil said tersely but had no plans of ever taking her up on the offer and she seemed to realise that was the best she was going to get so after a quick goodbye to Andrew, she took her leave.

He slid forward off of the couch and Andrew’s hand fell away as he pulled on his jacket and grabbed his bag. They walked together, in silence out into the foyer where Nicky, Kevin and Aaron were waiting.

The three of them rose to their feet, looking to Neil with worried expressions.

“How was the rest of the game?” he asked and Nicky pulled a face.

“Violent,” Aaron stated. “Dan might have broken that Backliner’s collar bone.”

“We won,” Kevin said, not giving him a chance to question what Aaron said. “Nine, six.”

Neil managed something close to a smile. “Good.”

Nicky drove them back to Fox Tower and when they got there even Aaron followed them into the dorm rather than going to find Katelyn. Neil tried to disappear into the bedroom as Andrew started to reheat food but Nicky caught his arm and pushed him to sit on the couch.

In the end, dinner turned out to be more desert than anything else and Andrew glared at Neil until he’d eaten at least half a plate of sugary things and despite the ever-present nausea in his stomach, Neil did feel better for eating.

And the next morning as they headed onto the court for practice, nobody said a word about Neil’s reaction at the game and that was all he needed for things to feel normal again.

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own.  
> Comments and kudos are appreciated ♥


End file.
